INTEGRITY

Psalms 17:3—Though You probe my heart and examine me at night, though You test me, You will find nothing; I have resolved that my mouth will not sin.

Matthew 12:36—But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

It was in part what the President wouldn’t say that disturbed a nation. Liberty lowered her torch and sat on her pedestal of stone weeping from the bitter blow his pride struck. She cried because he lied. She sobbed because he robbed—he stole the trust of a nation to enjoy forbidden pleasures. Tomorrow she will rise and light her torch. But it will not burn as bright. Around her base swirls water blackened with the slick oil of deceit. It’s mixture runs downstream leaching through soil at an alarming rate. Her children are poisoned by this hazardous waste of rationalization that dares to call evil good and good evil.

When the thunder of judgment claps from clouds of condemnation Liberty will not raise her voice with rush. She will not shake her clenched hand in anger. She knows that he is not the first to commit a sin. He is the exposed and vulnerable chief of a mixed tribe in which not one member can fire an arrow from an unrepaired bow.

She will cover her eyes and mourn because his conduct is a brazen blow to the cause of integrity. While dishonesty burns like acid indigestion what hurts her most is that so many don’t care. Her spirit sags against this growing tide of apathy. The loss of character hastens the death of trust. People, who no longer see fit to honor God by saying “no” to selfish desires, will no longer honor one another.

God said to King Solomon in 1 Kings 9:4,5, “As for you, if you walk before Me in integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe My decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father when I said, ‘You shall never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.’” Why should the same God Who allowed His people to be conquered because they abandoned morality, allow us to prosper if we mortgage our integrity on whatever our hearts covet? Abraham Lincoln said that for a man to train up a child in the way he or she should go, he must walk that way himself. If ever there was a time to be walking, the bells toll now! May God make us whole again that we might bring Him glory and shine before a world desperately trapped in the dark.

Inspiration

Integrity means the unimpaired state of anything.—Oswald Chambers in The Servant As His Lord